Whurps.
Now for the usual blogger mea culpa:
- I haven’t been posting very often.
- I haven’t updated my short story reading/reviewing.
- I haven’t written 100pgs of scripted material for ScriptFrenzy.
And now for the excuses, well, just one excuse really, I have been learning. For real:
- I discovered two new blogs: GoIntoTheStory and ScriptShadow. I’ve been feeding on the juices from these bloggers’ mindgrapes, and it is good.
- I’ve been reading spec scripts! Lots of them.
- I’ve been developing story ideas, which is easy to do once you’re immersed in the loglines of selling scripts. You get an idea of the concepts that turn studios into vomitting ATM machines. Hint-hint: most of these concepts suck ballz (from a quasi-pretentious-over-educated perspective), i.e. “A widower becomes a poonhound at a retirement community” or “A successful, but lonely lawyer finds true love in a crazy ice cream truck driver.”
- A phone call from a friend prompted me to re-examine my cynical, gold-digging, lowest-common-denomenator story ideas and give them real emotional meatiness.
- And finally, I’ve been lost. Completely and utterly unsure of myself in every regard as a writer. But that’s okay because (refer to No. 4) I have breathed new life into my two big stories and they are starting to come together.
So what’s next:
- I’ll post more often.
- I’m going to do a bi-weekly post of everything I’ve read recently.
- I’ll just have my own ScriptFrenzy in the next couple of months.
Screenwriting Tip #2: Toying with the Audience
(SPOILER ALERT) I Am Legend could have been great, but there was a point at which I had to leave the room and go rant to Sarah about it (and then go hug my dog).
If you’ve seen the movie then you probably know now what I’m talking about: when the dog dies. Killing a pet in a movie is just mean. I don’t like it. Like most folks my age, I was traumatized by Turner & Hooch (and I still have a hard time liking Mark Wahlberg after Fear). [EDIT: And I refuse to watch or read Marley & Me.]
But I especially dislike the way I Am Legend kills the dog. Here’s why:
First, we get a suspense-packed scene where the dog chases a deer into a dark building. We’re on the edge of our seats, praying that the dog will make it. We hear mammalian screeches, see a pool of blood, then a furry snout. Our worst fears are around the corner until– nope, that was the deer. The dog made it out alive! Who cares about the deer, right? Woohoo, what a scene! At that point I was sucked into the movie. If I didn’t before, I now cared a lot about Will Smith and his dog. The filmmakers had done their duty. Bravo!
You want to write scenes like this for this exact purpose, unfortunately such strong medicine is not without side effects, that is, these kinds of scenes set up rules and make promises that the rest of the movie has to deliver on. This scene promises me that the dog will be okay. Will Smith will be more careful next time.
Does it keep its promise? Nope, a few scenes later the dog gets killed. And the worst part is, this scene is far less suspenseful, far less interesting than the previous scene where the dog lived.
So I think this should be a screenwriting rule, if the dog narrowly lives in one scene, you shouldn’t kill him off three scenes later. I realize that horror movies may want to break this rule and apparently I Am Legend tried to be a horror film in some ways, but damn…those CGI monsters were lame. So if you want to break this rule, you better make the latter scene, the death scene, twice as good as the near death scene.
I Am Legend is a wonderful movie to learn from because it is a trainwreck. I’d really like to read about the committee that put it together because there are loose threads everywhere. I bet somewhere though, there is an amazing first draft that someone forgot to shred.
03.10.09Richard Price at the Alley Theatre
I went to a reading/interview/booksigning thing last night with Richard Price, the author of such novels as Clockers, The Wanderers, and Samaritan, but I’d only read his most recent book, Lush Life. Price is also a great screenwriter. He wrote Sea of Love, Mad Dog and Glory, and Ransom among others. He was also a writer for my favorite TV show ever, The Wire. Price has been called the best writer of dialog alive today, so anyone trying to write a script would do well to pay attention to him.
The reading was excellent; Price is funny and entertaining, though he did not want to talk about screenwriting (there seems to be some bitterness there).
For many of his novels, Price spent a lot of time with cops. (He once did a true story on This American Life about riding with some cops in NYC. From what I remember it was hilarious.) As for technique, he said it wasn’t about just stealing phrases from people so you can use them later. Rather, he likes to get a feel for the rhythms that different kinds of people use.
Real dialog, he said, is almost always interminable and goes nowhere. So when we write dialog it will always be a bit fake; there’s got to be some art to it. In a similar vein, Price responded to the suggestion that his work was similar to social realism, by criticizing social realists for not “playing” enough in their work. He makes a distinction between reportage and art.
Lesson gleaned: listen to the kinds of people you want to write about and get a feel for the rhythms of their speech. Real life is almost always boring and without structure.
03.8.09The Plan #1
This is the one that keeps me up at night. What is the plan? You want to be a screenwriter or a TV writer, but how do you do that?
The standard plan is simple:
- Write something great.
- Get someone important to read it.
- ?
- Profit!
And somewhere between the important person and the question mark is an implied, “Move to LA.”
But I don’t want to move to LA, at least not now. I’ve got a good job, friends, and family here (and so does my girlfriend). No sense in pulling up stakes during a recession either.
So for now my plan is to write write write. I’m working on a 30 Rock spec that should be ready to enter in a few contests: Scriptapalooza, Austin Film Festival, Script PIMP, and Acclaim. I’m hoping to place high in a few of those then start Operation:Shameless Self-Promotion, the beginning stages of which being this blog.
“The Plan” will be a continuing series on the blog.
03.7.09Screenwriting Tip #1: Chekov’s Gun
To paraphrase: “If you show a loaded gun in the first act, you better shoot it in the second act.”
This is great tip to remember, but I think the statement is better applied in reverse: “If you want to shoot the gun the second act, you have to load it in the first act.”
For example, I was writing a My Name Is Earl spec a while back and I had a scene that had to end with Earl getting a hair sample from a brush. Originally the scene simply ended with Earl looking around the room, spotting the brush and going for it.
When I read it later I thought, how convenient for that brush to appear and solve Earl’s problem. Lame. It’s like a gun just appearing in a character’s hand so he can shoot the bad guy.
So I fixed it, by having the scene begin with another character taking the brush along with some other items and then placing them on a table (loading the gun). Then she and Earl talk about something unrelated to the brush, blah, blah, blah… Then as Earl’s on his way out, he remembers THE BRUSH!
You already know what needs to happen in your story, you need to shoot that gun. By applying Chekov’s rule in reverse you can make sure the gun doesn’t come out of nowhere and piss of your readers.
03.5.09Reading goals
I’m the worst kind of writer, the kind that doesn’t read. Stephen King says, harshly, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” Well, yes, those are both true. But somehow I find the odd opportunity to do them enough that I can still call myself a writer.
My buddy, Jeff, reads more than either of us writes, for the past two years exceeding his goal of 52 books per year. I won’t pretend that I can match that goal, but I’m starting a modest program for the next year that I think will be both enjoyable and fruitful: 52 short stories in one year.
But here’s the catch: after reading the story I’ll post something to my blog. It may be a single-sentence review, a standout quote, or even a paragraph or two.
I’ll try to write these blurbs with a view toward storytelling, i.e. what techniques can be gleaned from the reading.
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